Laila Lalami: Yesterday, The Economist complained that, in a book on slavery, “almost all the blacks are victims, almost all the whites villains.” Today, the NYT frets that, in my book on Spanish conquest, “Europeans conquer, enslave and erase while Native Americans are a people apart.” Complexity of character does not mean showing the “good side” of the conquerors or the “bad side” of the conquered. If you want to see that kind of “complexity” in settler colonialism and genocide, then watch a John Wayne movie. My book shows complicated and transformative relationships between a Moroccan slave, Spanish conquerors, and Native American tribes. In ten years of publishing, I have never once complained about a review. A review is an opinion. And you know what they say about opinions. But I could not let such an egregious misreading of my work go unanswered.
[…] Aaron Bady: Using the hashtag #economistbookreviews, she wrote:
The Handmaid’s Tale depicts women’s subjugation in a theocratic society, but fails to show patriarchy’s positive side.
In Beloved, Toni Morrison writes about a slave who escapes from a Kentucky plantation. But what about the slaveowner?
One fails to understand why Mr. Marquez inserts magical elements in a setting where realism is more appropriate.
Mr. Kafka is unnecessarily harsh toward a family whose son has turned into a gigantic bug.
Mr. Bradbury argues that burning books is bad, but provides no solution to the unemployment that firemen would face.
The Economist eventually withdrew its review, but this kind of “objectivity” remains a part of the critical landscape: when writing a book about slavery, don’t make the white people the bad guys. And if you write a book about conquistadors in the Americas, making them the villains of the story is “simplistic.” More here.